LMS | News

New Partnership Makes Learning.com Content Available in Blackboard Learn

• By Andrew Barbour
• 06/26/12

In a joint announcement at ISTE, Blackboard and Learning.com unveiled a partnership to integrate Learning.com's catalog of K-12 content and tools directly into the Blackboard Learn LMS. The integration is currently being piloted by several K-12 schools, but the companies hope to make the paired product available to the broader educational sector soon. At that point, teachers and administrators will be able to seamlessly locate, use, and manage more than 200,000 digital learning resources from the Learning.com catalog within the Blackboard Learn course platform.

The Learning.com catalog includes curriculum and textbook content, multimedia, assignments, quizzes, and more--both free and fee-based--from leading publishers and individual educators. Subject areas covered include language arts, library media, math, science, technology, as well as professional development for teachers.

"Students are demanding new types of content to support personalized learning and, as a result, teachers need smart ways to locate and manage rich material," said Matthew Small, Blackboard's chief business officer. "By partnering with Learning.com, we plan to provide our clients with access to high-quality learning tools that help students succeed--whether a district curriculum, an innovative learning tool from a trusted provider, or a unique activity designed by a peer."

Using the system, teachers will be able to build a lesson plan with material from Learning.com and make it available to students through Blackboard Learn with a single sign-on, eliminating barriers posed by having to access content from multiple websites with different logins and passwords. Assignments will appear directly in the Blackboard Learn gradebook, so teachers can easily monitor student progress.

"Our teachers love to incorporate third-party content into coursework," said Alisa Jones, supervisor of instructional resources at Clay Virtual Academy (FL). "However, up until now, materials were dispersed across multiple sites requiring a tremendous amount of time to find appropriate resources."